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Sep 8, 2016 | 01:37

Food deliverers face eat or be eaten showdown

The mobile meal delivery sector is facing a showdown, with well-funded regional players squeezing out local rivals unable to keep pace in marketing food fights now being waged in cities around the globe. Stuart McDill reports

TRANSCRIPT +

As big business moves into delivering food - the sector is gearing up for a showdown.
Players like Uber, Amazon and Google want a slice of a market that's attracted ten billion dollars of venture capital in the last two and a half years.
Uber - the taxi app - is already in 400 cities globally and its hiring new teams to run its food delivery business.
Expect casualties.
(SOUNDBITE) (English) REUTERS TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT ERIC AUCHARD, SAYING:
"It's essentially taking the Uber platform which is transportation and sticking food on top of it as just something extra they can do that you can already do with Uber. The economics of that are likely to be vastly improved."
Established players in London include Deliveroo and Just Eat - and now even Amazon
Uber revolutionised taxi hire
Now how we buy our food could be next
(SOUNDBITE) (English) REUTERS TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT ERIC AUCHARD, SAYING:
"They're experimenting with efforts to create centralised kitchens. So cooks that have an idea for a new restaurant rather than opening a restaurant might open just a website and connect through Deliveroo to their customers, start serving meals through Deliveroo and then perhaps down the line if they're successful open a restaurant. So they're trying to reinvent the way people eat."
The big boys arrival confirms the success of food ordering apps
But it's uncertain times for around four hundred companies in the sector

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